Major problems

First, let me say I am a Mac user. However, I have no problem working
my way around a PC (system & hardware) - it's good to be
bilingual!

I built a box for my kids last year since all they wanted to do was
gaming. I got an AU13 and an Athlon XP 2500+ (for 100.00 new - geat
deal). Graphics card is a PNY 5600 Ultra with 128MB of ram. HD is a
Maxtor 200GB ATA133. Running 2k for the OS. 128MB of Corsair RAM.
Everything went flawless and worked well for awhile.

Recently the kids somehow hosed the system. At boot I would get an
error about it not being able to find the Systemced file (which I have
come to find out means System - the ced seams to mean nothing). So I
tried to use the boot discs. It wouldn't even boot from that. I get
the following error - "File \ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The
error code is 7". Have swapped floppy drives from other working
machines to no avail. Also swapped RAM slots - nothing. Swapped ram
for a new Kingston 512MB DIMM intended for another machine - nothing.
Verified HD is working by putting it in a different machine which
gladly reinstalled 2k and booted without problems. Cleared CMOS
numerous times. Pulled all cards/drives, cleared CMOS, pulled battery
and reinstalled one-by-one - nothing. It is not the boot disc either
as I tried a 95 and 98 boot disc and get errors on it as well. What
is the problem?

Please help before I go buy a different brand board, which if I do,
what to get? Thanks!

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Doing a little bit of digging, it sounds like the SYSTEMced error is
caused because the SYSTEM portion of the registry cannot be loaded into
the first 16 MB of memory. I seriously doubt that your kids' registry
would have grown that large, so that makes me think it is a problem with
the BIOS or the memory itself.

However, you say that you have swapped out the memory, and that did not
help. You also stated that you reset the BIOS, and that did not help,
either. Even using a Windows 95 or Windows 98 boot floppy gives
problems, so it is certainly not a Windows issue.

You may try going into the BIOS to make sure the CPU and RAM are
actually running at the correct speeds, or even try to underclock them.
If the BIOS has a temperature/voltage monitoring section, make sure
that the voltages are within +/-5% of spec. If you have another power
supply laying around, you may try that.

Take a look at the motherboard for bulging or leaking capacitors. Take
a look at http://www.badcaps.net for examples. If you have bad
capacitors, that could explain your problems. If you have soldering
skills, you may be able to fix it yourself for cheap.

If you do end up replacing the motherboard, I can say that the Epox
8RDA+ motherboard I have now is the best motherboard I have ever owned.
It is a discontinued model now, but if you look at a place like
Newegg, you may be able to find another Epox NForce2 board to replace it.

Good luck!

--Alex

per4manz wrote:
> First, let me say I am a Mac user. However, I have no problem working
> my way around a PC (system & hardware) - it's good to be
> bilingual!
>
> I built a box for my kids last year since all they wanted to do was
> gaming. I got an AU13 and an Athlon XP 2500+ (for 100.00 new - geat
> deal). Graphics card is a PNY 5600 Ultra with 128MB of ram. HD is a
> Maxtor 200GB ATA133. Running 2k for the OS. 128MB of Corsair RAM.
> Everything went flawless and worked well for awhile.
>
> Recently the kids somehow hosed the system. At boot I would get an
> error about it not being able to find the Systemced file (which I have
> come to find out means System - the ced seams to mean nothing). So I
> tried to use the boot discs. It wouldn't even boot from that. I get
> the following error - "File \ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The
> error code is 7". Have swapped floppy drives from other working
> machines to no avail. Also swapped RAM slots - nothing. Swapped ram
> for a new Kingston 512MB DIMM intended for another machine - nothing.
> Verified HD is working by putting it in a different machine which
> gladly reinstalled 2k and booted without problems. Cleared CMOS
> numerous times. Pulled all cards/drives, cleared CMOS, pulled battery
> and reinstalled one-by-one - nothing. It is not the boot disc either
> as I tried a 95 and 98 boot disc and get errors on it as well. What
> is the problem?
>
> Please help before I go buy a different brand board, which if I do,
> what to get? Thanks!
>

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I had this same error, the cause was a hardware failure of some sort
(which recently finally identified itself as a bad stick of ram) and
the system "hive" got bloated. Alex gave you some good links, there
is an MS article on the error, and there is a chance your original
hive files are usable to get the system working. However, if you
formatted with NTFS, the process is more arduous. If you formatted
fat32, then a simple boot disk can be used to "copy" the original hive
files.

First check the system hive file sizes. Mine got bloated by a driver
writing the same string over and over into the file (this is my guess
as to what happened upon analyzing the bloated hive file).

--
Best regards,
Kyle
"per4manz" <-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> wrote in message
news:41c99e5c$...
| First, let me say I am a Mac user. However, I have no problem
working
| my way around a PC (system & hardware) - it's good to be
| bilingual!
|
| I built a box for my kids last year since all they wanted to do was
| gaming. I got an AU13 and an Athlon XP 2500+ (for 100.00 new - geat
| deal). Graphics card is a PNY 5600 Ultra with 128MB of ram. HD is
a
| Maxtor 200GB ATA133. Running 2k for the OS. 128MB of Corsair RAM.
| Everything went flawless and worked well for awhile.
|
| Recently the kids somehow hosed the system. At boot I would get an
| error about it not being able to find the Systemced file (which I
have
| come to find out means System - the ced seams to mean nothing). So
I
| tried to use the boot discs. It wouldn't even boot from that. I
get
| the following error - "File \ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The
| error code is 7". Have swapped floppy drives from other working
| machines to no avail. Also swapped RAM slots - nothing. Swapped
ram
| for a new Kingston 512MB DIMM intended for another machine -
nothing.
| Verified HD is working by putting it in a different machine which
| gladly reinstalled 2k and booted without problems. Cleared CMOS
| numerous times. Pulled all cards/drives, cleared CMOS, pulled
battery
| and reinstalled one-by-one - nothing. It is not the boot disc
either
| as I tried a 95 and 98 boot disc and get errors on it as well. What
| is the problem?
|
| Please help before I go buy a different brand board, which if I do,
| what to get? Thanks!
|

Thanks for the responses guys. After some testing upon retesting I
found that the computer would try to boot to a 98 floppy. However, it
kept telling my the that himem.sys and others could not be loaded, or
were missing, or were corrupt. I kept toying with the thing and
realized the red drive light was staying on. Did some more tinkering
and noticed that at boot time the only two drives to show up were the
CD drive and floppy. I then remembered I have the MaxBlast 3 disc
that came with the HD so I tried it. It booted, but couldn't see the
drive. I then put the CD and HD on seperate busses (even though the
HD was set to master and CD to slave and all was connected properly)
and MaxBlast finally saw the drive. I was able to wipe it and
partition it (since it's a 200 GB drive 2k sp1 can only see 137 at a
time). After that, it still wouldn't boot all the way from a set of
floppies. It kept having problems with disc 1 & 3. I remade them
several times. I also tested the boot floppies on my only other
working 2k system and it wouldn't boot it either. It kept coming up
with the same error from my original post. Rebooted back into 2k and
found that both the actual disc 1 & 3 were bad. Finally decided
to build a bootable 2k Install CD and have had no problems since.

Now I would like to update my BIOS. I have version TFA42 installed.
FICs websites say that TFA41 is the most current. Do BIOS numbers
ususally progress backwards? Seems odd. Also, there sites are very
confusing about how to go about doing it, especially in regards to 2k.
I do not have any machines running anything other than 2k, so how do
I go about this?

Any more help will be greatly appreciated.

One other thing. I did send an email to FICs tech support through
their website - it came back undeliverable. All I have to say is that
this is the one and only FIC I will own after this. I cannot even
find out how long the warranty is good for on this board. I do have
an ASUS on order, but am not sure if I will need it now. Any
comments?

I took a look at the BIOS update pages, and apparently the different
websites have different information. For example, the Taiwan website
says that the current version is TFA42 if you have a version 1.2 board,
but TFD41 (not TFA41) if you have a version 1.4 board.

If you are unsure of the version number of your board, try looking for
some markings somewhere on the motherboard... it is often (but not
always) near the keyboard connector. The BIOSes for the different
versions are often NOT compatible, so be careful. My guess is that you
have a 1.2 board.

You will probably want to create a boot disk to flash the BIOS. As you
say, this is a problem with Windows 2000, especially since that is the
only version of Windows you have. I recommend going tohttp://www.bootdisk.com and grab one of their "Driver Free Disk For Bios
Flashing" files. Download it, run it, and it will create a boot floppy
for you, using DR-DOS. I know this website looks like a virus waiting
to happen, but it does work. If not, try asking around your friends or
coworkers for a boot disk.

Some BIOSes actually have an embedded BIOS flashing utility. As you
boot the computer, you may see a message like "press Alt-F2 for flashing
utility". I have no idea if the AU13 has this or not, though.

I may not be around to answer your messages for a week or so, so if I do
not answer, it is not that I am ignoring you. In the meantime, if you
are looking for another source of help, you may try the FIC forum athttp://www.nforcershq.com/forum .

Good luck!

--Alex

per4manz wrote:
> Thanks for the responses guys. After some testing upon retesting I
> found that the computer would try to boot to a 98 floppy. However, it
> kept telling my the that himem.sys and others could not be loaded, or
> were missing, or were corrupt. I kept toying with the thing and
> realized the red drive light was staying on. Did some more tinkering
> and noticed that at boot time the only two drives to show up were the
> CD drive and floppy. I then remembered I have the MaxBlast 3 disc
> that came with the HD so I tried it. It booted, but couldn't see the
> drive. I then put the CD and HD on seperate busses (even though the
> HD was set to master and CD to slave and all was connected properly)
> and MaxBlast finally saw the drive. I was able to wipe it and
> partition it (since it's a 200 GB drive 2k sp1 can only see 137 at a
> time). After that, it still wouldn't boot all the way from a set of
> floppies. It kept having problems with disc 1 & 3. I remade them
> several times. I also tested the boot floppies on my only other
> working 2k system and it wouldn't boot it either. It kept coming up
> with the same error from my original post. Rebooted back into 2k and
> found that both the actual disc 1 & 3 were bad. Finally decided
> to build a bootable 2k Install CD and have had no problems since.
>
> Now I would like to update my BIOS. I have version TFA42 installed.
> FICs websites say that TFA41 is the most current. Do BIOS numbers
> ususally progress backwards? Seems odd. Also, there sites are very
> confusing about how to go about doing it, especially in regards to 2k.
> I do not have any machines running anything other than 2k, so how do
> I go about this?
>
> Any more help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> One other thing. I did send an email to FICs tech support through
> their website - it came back undeliverable. All I have to say is that
> this is the one and only FIC I will own after this. I cannot even
> find out how long the warranty is good for on this board. I do have
> an ASUS on order, but am not sure if I will need it now. Any
> comments?
>

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